1. Technical Field
The invention relates to targeted advertising. More specifically, the invention relates to a system for trustworthy tracking of rendered and displayed advertisements for payment based on completion of viewing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Targeted and focused advertising is a way to reach people directly with items of interest to them. The wide spread use of mobile handheld display devices (MHDDs), like cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), in conjunction with stationary display devices (DDs), have made the rendering and execution of content, including the targeted advertisements, a very complex process. Since the MHDDs can be used to view preloaded content even when they are disconnected from a network, targeted advertisements are also pre-stored on the MHDDs to be rendered and displayed when the selected content is viewed on the MHDDs.
Typically, payment for content and the advertisements used in the content is based on the number of times the content and the associated advertisement is viewed by the customer. This payment model necessitates tracking the content and viewing the content to ensure that the content and advertisements are effectively presented in a predefined fashion, and hence are eligible for payment. According to the prior art, this is done by the use of beacons attached to the content. Using beacons, the tracking of the rendering and of the display of the content is explained in terms of the content. The systems for tracking the viewing of content are explained using MHDD as the basis as viewing of the content on DDs form a simpler subset of that on the MHDD.
FIG. 1 shows a typical implementation of the prior art system 1000 for evaluating and tracking the viewing of content 103 including associated advertisements on an MHDD. Content providers 101 generate the content 103 and supply them to the web server 201. The content 103 contains beacons 104, which are embedded executable script, as part of the content. The web server 201 generates web pages 202 by combining content 103 from multiple content providers 101. These web pages 202 are stored in a library 203 on the web server. The web pages contain, as part of the content 103, the beacons 104. During connected time, when the MHDD 301 is connected to the net, the content 103 can be downloaded on to the MHDD 301 and stored. When this content 103 is viewed, as the specific portion of the content 103 with the beacon 104 is rendered and displayed, the beacons 104 are executed on the web browser 302. The number of times each beacon 104 is executed on the web server 302 is transferred 306, by the web server, to a tracking server 401 directly when the MHDD 301 is connected to the internet. If not, this beacon 104 execution count on the web browser 302, is stored on the MHDD 301, and transferred to the tracking server 401 when an active connection is established. The tracking server 401 uses this count to establish the payment criteria, as per predefined agreements, to the content and advertisement providers 101.
The use of beacon 104 execution counts on the web browser 302 is not a very trustworthy indication of the rendering and display of the content 103 and advertisements. This is due to the fact that it is possible to invisibly encapsulate beacons 104 and add them to the content 103. As a result a larger than actual count may be produced during rendering of a content 103 without really displaying the content multiple times. Similarly it is possible to make beacons 104 inactive during content 103 display such that the beacon 104 execution count that is provided to the tracking server is less than the number of times the content 103 is actually rendered and displayed.